Experience

I believe great design has to be usable, accessible, and beautiful — all three, all the time. Sacrificing any one of them isn't a tradeoff, it's simply not good enough.

That conviction has shaped my career across design studios, top branding agencies, and over a decade leading design at Microsoft and Uber, working at the scale where the gap between intention and execution is the real challenge.

At Microsoft, I helped establish Fluent as the core design system of Microsoft, serving its diverse portfolio, and later led design system work for Copilot, enabling AI experiences across the M365 ecosystem.

At Uber, I lead Platform Experiences, spanning design systems, AI workflows, and accessibility. I evolved the design system from a UI kit into a machine-readable UI platform, defining its role in enabling product velocity and quality at scale in the AI era. I also established the Expression team, acting as tastemakers for Uber's in-app visual quality. The team owns design direction across the design system's full visual layer: icons, illustration, photography, motion, and 3D, all systemized with guidelines and AI-assisted workflows to scale craft without diluting it. The goal is simple: make taste replicable.

My background in branding, motion, and systems thinking runs through everything I do. I stay close to the work and approach design as a product, partnering across disciplines to shape what and why we build, and not only how.

Education

I knew I wanted to be a designer from an early age; shaped in part by my first painting teacher at the age of eight, a graphic designer who made the craft feel like a real pursuit. I studied graphic design through high school, then earned a BFA in Communication Design from the University of Tehran, followed by a fellowship to complete an MFA in Motion Media Design at Savannah College of Art and Design. I later completed the HCI Executive Program at MIT.

Throughout, I worked alongside my formal training since high school. I've always believed real-world problems are where design education actually takes hold.

Experiment

I'm always working on something on the side.

Right now that means AI, with two clear goals: building smarter UI frameworks that enable velocity without sacrificing precision, and aggressively automating repetitive workflows so my team can focus on work that needs their judgment.

Constantly learning, jamming, and building. Agents, tools, pipelines, prototypes. If it might change how design teams work, I want to understand it firsthand.

Beyond AI, I'm always looking for the next thing worth making, and that often leads me to nonprofit work.

I'd love to walk with you and talk about a creative project or an idea that leads us to say, "Let's do it!"